while it is certainly correct that in comparing development costs of enclosed parking garages, the Robotic Parking garages will be less costly in capital expenditures as well as operating expenditures in any urban setting, Frank De Foe has something mixed up: the City of Hoboken gave a no-bid contract to his boss Haim Shani in June / July 2006 to take over the garage which we built and operated for more than 4 years with excellent patron feedbacks including from NJ Senator Kenny.

The same person who gave this no-bid contract to Shani /Unitronics, John Corea, is now facing a prosecution demanded sentence of 8 years prison and payback of bribes he received after having plead guilty to charges for other no-bid contracts and taking bribes while heading the Hoboken Parking Authority.

In getting a pioneering technology concept fully operational, there are always, of course, some initial difficulties.

Frank seems to be a bit disingenuous in his statements about the source of the difficulties. He omits considerable data on the difficulties that Unitronics had in operating the garage after the “takeover” by Unitronics/Shani.

This could be forgiven as the normal salesmen’s enthusiasm for his product and/or an inclination to criticize his competition were it not for considerable omitted data:
Here is an example of what Frank omits:

and this Web Link
from Thurman Hart, adjunct professor of Political Science at New Jersey City University in his blog on July 10, 2008: “Or maybe the money flew to Israel: Corea said he, City Information Technology Officer Patrick Ricciardi, and one other person will go on a five-day trip to Israel, where Unitronics is based, next week to get certified training in how to operate and maintain the machines……..All that's missing is someone name Golan Cipel”
All of the above happened after Unitronics was given a no-bid contract by the now indicted John Corea and after Shani/Unitronics “took over” the operation of the garage in Hoboken.
And one more thing happened: the City of Hoboken (CoH) settled the Robotic suit by paying hundreds of thousands of Dollars to Robotic. Why ? Certainly not because all what was done with Unitronics was right. Did Unitronics settle the lawsuit CoH made against Unitronics?

Robotic Parking Systems, in the meantime, has moved on and has built several of the largest automatic garages worldwide with a flawless operational record in Dubai – operating for several years.

It’s amazing what can be accomplished in a political – sociological environment where alleged corruption is not a significant factor!

But with all that, I wish the City of Menlo Park all the best in using the exciting automated parking technology pioneered initially by Robotic Parking.

And I congratulate Shani/Unitronics on having the good judgment to “going to school” on and learning from the first fully automated parking garage in America. No doubt the technology will improve and I trust that Shani/Unitronics will contribute to the forward evolution.

For our part we continue to be committed to seeing that automated parking technology does improve and that its adaption expands.